As a distinctive script, Hebrew emerged from its Phoenician and Canaanite origins at roughly the turn of the first millennium B.C.E., eventually adopting the Aramaic (in talmudic lingo, “Assyrian”) look during the Second Temple period. In some ways a no-frills alphabet, Hebrew has no uppercase, capital letters, or italics; vowels float around the consonantal letters, or are left to the reader’s memory and imagination. But the basic framework has proved fertile ground for visual creativity.

The Evolution

Over the centuries, three Hebrew “hands” emerged: the formal square or block letter, which, in its thinner Sephardi version, became the most popular printed font ; a semi-cursive known today as “Rashi script,” the visual calling card of rabbinic texts; and a cursive, flowing hand for everyday correspondence.
The invention of movable type in the late 15th century was seized upon by Jews in Italy and Spain who were literate and hungry for books. The standard was set by the Soncino family, which from 1484 to 1557 published works in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Non-Jewish printers with their own attraction to the Hebrew classics included Daniel Bomberg of Venice (died 1549), who developed an elegant typeface for the first printed Talmud, and Guillaume Le Bé (1525-1598), who, working in Venice and Paris, created almost twenty Hebrew fonts. To the north, Prague’s Jewish printers developed Gothic, Ashkenazi-based fonts in the 1520s; Amsterdam became a printing center in the 17th century. All these set the typographical templates for the entire Jewish world.

Modern Hebrew

Modern times saw new technologies and new sensibilities. Frank-Ruehl, named for the early-20th-century Leipzig duo (a cantor and a graphic artist) who designed it, transposed Sephardi script into Art Nouveau. As “Rashi script” was abandoned by all but traditionalists, new sans-serif faces expressed the geometric design principles of the Bauhaus school and the shaking-off of layers of tradition. Closer to our own time, graphic designers strove to unite the old with the new: Ismar David and Zvi Narkis created the popular fonts that bear their surnames; Fransizka Baruch’s new Ashkenazi style greets today’s readers of Ha’aretz.

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